Boone's Lick »

Larry McMurtry worked as a cowhand on his father's Texas cattle ranch until he was 22, but never aspired to be a rancher. Instead, he published his first novel, Horseman, Pass By, when he was just 25. More than two dozen novels later, there's still more to McMurtry than a typical western.

Boone's Lick is a major novel in the rich tradition of Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon about the opening up of the American West, by its most distinguished fiction writer. It is the story of a trek, by riverboat and wagon, from Boone's Lick, Missouri to Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming. The trekkers are the Cecil Family: Ma (Mary Margaret); Rosie (half-sister); Seth (brother of Ma's husband Dick); Shay, G.T., and Neva (teenagers); and baby Marcy and Granpa Crackenthorpe, accompanied most of the way by a priest (Father Villy) and a Snake Indian (Charlie Seven Days).

The object of the trek is to find Dick Cecil, a wagoner and freight hauler; and the reason his wife Mary Margaret wants to find him is to inform him that she's leaving him. In fact, she's leaving him for Seth, his brother, who has been her mainstay all along. After many adventures, Mary Margaret does find Dick and does tell him off, at Fort Phil Kearney - on what turns out to be the eve of the Fetterman Massacre (December 21, 1886), which provides the climax of one of Larry McMurtry's richest and most satisfying novels.

Book Magazine

In contrast to the epic sweep of the Lonesome Dove cycle, McMurtry's return to the dusty trails of the Old West is more of an elegy—compact in construction, graceful in tone, with a simplicity of expression that belies its thematic depth. Narrating the novel is fifteen-year-old Sherman "Shay" Cecil, the oldest son of a strong-willed mother and a father who has all but abandoned the family. Impoverished in Boone's Lick, Missouri, they embark on a pilgrimage to find the father, knowing that he isn't likely to welcome the reunion. Though the story initially recycles some cliches (in addition to a gratuitous appearance by Wild Bill Hickok there's the inevitable inclusion of a whore with a heart of gold), it finds its footing as it heads for the frontier. Along the way, Shay discovers essential truths about love, fate and chance, and the unexpected ways things fit together. The more he learns about his mother and his relatives, the better he understands himself. As Shay explains, "It was such unfamiliar territory that I could not even be sure I knew the difference between a big thing and a little thing..." As McMurtry recognizes, the little things are where the big things reveal themselves.
—Don McLeese